To examine the social and economic impacts of the next Grand Solar Minimum – See About

On another post here on Watts Up With That, a commenter pointed out that NOAA says that September 2014 was the warmest September ever on record. The commenter asked, “Is NOAA wrong?”

Sadly, as near as I can tell the answer is “Quite possibly”.

Here is the NOAA graphic in question, showing their idea of the current year to date in black, and the five warmest years in color.

Figure 1. NOAA’s graphic showing the progress of the year to date. SOURCE

Man, they are squeezing it to claim this September was the warmest, looks like a three-way tie to me … but I digress.

Now, I have read in a lot of places that we currently have good agreement between the satellite temperature data and the ground temperature data. Each time I read that, I just laugh. While the two measurements are closer than they have been…

There was a tremendous solar flair this October that radiated the Earth with extra energy. So October may have been warmer than usual due to that, even though overall, the Earth is cooling bit. The cooler half of the Gleissberg cycle will be kicking in soon, possibly in 2 or more years, and then temps will decrease.